I thought this exam wasn't half bad tbh.
I left a couple answers blank I must admit. The Keplar's Law question, and the damping question!
A couple dodgy mistakes and answers I made/gave were...
Forgot that a W was a Js, so just used E=12, instead of E=12x60x60...would using E=12 only drop one of the marks, I did all the other conversions correctly???

For the escape velocity I simply wrote that Helium is lighter than air, so floats up!! Any chance whatsoever for a mark?

I think that's about it, undoubtedly there will be other errors in there!

(Original post by Stevo F)
obviously its correct, why else would you put helium in your balloons? lol
I made another statement which is also correct too and I also dont know if it'll be credited with any marks

I meant correct as its a reason the atoms escape as solar wind blow them off the top of he atmosphere...i believe we all know there less dense haha

Sooo I recalled this paper as I did considerably worse than expected to find that my grade of a D was 39/60 raw mark, that 42 was a C and 38 an E wtf? that's ridiculous grade boundries I know how they get them but I mean 65% i'd expect at least a C for that -_-
Also anyone kno where I can find the mark scheme? :P as U can' r get hold of it grrrrr

(Original post by extermin8or)
Sooo I recalled this paper as I did considerably worse than expected to find that my grade of a D was 39/60 raw mark, that 42 was a C and 38 an E wtf? that's ridiculous grade boundries I know how they get them but I mean 65% i'd expect at least a C for that -_-
Also anyone kno where I can find the mark scheme? :P as U can' r get hold of it grrrrr

No Official Mark Scheme, however there is an accepted unofficial one further back in the thread, and yes this was a terrible paper as there were 3marks between grade boundaries, for someone in your position... Middle end levels B-D, the paper was very unforgiving. It didn't distinguish between candidates very well.

My friends dad actually wrote to the exam board to ask why the grade boundaries were so high and so compressed. They basically said that the paper turned out to be much more straight forward than they expected (possibly due to the extra 15 minutes we got), and at the standardisation meeting (or something like that) they found everyone had done much better than the other exam boards.. They decided they couldnt make the mark scheme harsher so had to up the grade boundaries significantly.
They also said that it was nothing to do with government pressure to make exams harder to pass, and that they dont want to have the grade boundaries anywhere near as high again..

and having seen the markscheme.. i think its ridiculous very specific and picky, and penalising people who understand what they are talking about but havent included odd key words :L

To be fair, it doesn't seem unreasonable that the grade boundaries were so high, when so many people both here and at my school came out of the exam saying how easy it was (and let's face it, it was pretty easy).

It would be fair to criticise OCR for setting such an easy paper in the first place. But not, I think, for the resulting grade boundaries.

I sat this paper 3 times, Got U,C then B.
The easiest by far was the one i got the B in, if that had been the paper i did first time round i would of probably gotten an A/B grade. They made it far to easy, which is so *****ing unfare to poeple that revised more than others, i think anyone could pass this with a small amount of revision.

one of my friends got a B, they had it remarked and then got an A. turns out they didnt mark one of this 4 mark questions....
OCR...... what the hell is wrong with you?

I think it was easy to do "average" in this paper, and at the top there was still a lot of lee way, you could lose 12 marks and still get an A.... The people that deserved A's and understood their physics will have got their A.. But silly mistakes will cost. The fault lies with the paper not the mark scheme, if it was so easy - the people posting would have got full marks?
Also if anyone thinks having to put in specific words is bad in Physics... Try do A level Biology, now that is picky.

(Original post by S.Patchett)
I think it was easy to do "average" in this paper, and at the top there was still a lot of lee way, you could lose 12 marks and still get an A.... The people that deserved A's and understood their physics will have got their A.. But silly mistakes will cost. The fault lies with the paper not the mark scheme, if it was so easy - the people posting would have got full marks?
Also if anyone thinks having to put in specific words is bad in Physics... Try do A level Biology, now that is picky.

Fair enough comments, i think the people who lost out are the people who are aiming for middle grades, just because you needed more raw marks than normal to get those grades, and also like you said, silly mistakes cost a lot..

My comment about how specific the mark scheme was was mainly aimed at the 4 mark question about explaining how molecules exert a pressure on a container. The markscheme has 5 bullet points to gain the 4 marks, 1 of the bullet points is irrelevant to the question, 1 has the word 'many' underlined (many molecules), which is both incorrect (you dont need 'many' molecules to exert a pressure, just the pressure wouldnt be measurable) and penalising people who know what they are talking about but have only implied that there are 'many' rather than specifically writing the word. 3 of the bullet points rely on you talking about momentum too, so even if you explained 'how' it exerts a pressure, if you didnt mention the specifics of momentum behind it, you could only get half marks max. (i guess the last point is less of an issue, although i still think only 1 mark should be lost for that).

(Original post by just george)
Fair enough comments, i think the people who lost out are the people who are aiming for middle grades, just because you needed more raw marks than normal to get those grades, and also like you said, silly mistakes cost a lot..

My comment about how specific the mark scheme was was mainly aimed at the 4 mark question about explaining how molecules exert a pressure on a container. The markscheme has 5 bullet points to gain the 4 marks, 1 of the bullet points is irrelevant to the question, 1 has the word 'many' underlined (many molecules), which is both incorrect (you dont need 'many' molecules to exert a pressure, just the pressure wouldnt be measurable) and penalising people who know what they are talking about but have only implied that there are 'many' rather than specifically writing the word. 3 of the bullet points rely on you talking about momentum too, so even if you explained 'how' it exerts a pressure, if you didnt mention the specifics of momentum behind it, you could only get half marks max. (i guess the last point is less of an issue, although i still think only 1 mark should be lost for that).

Guess thats partially just my opinion though

For 4marks though, i thought that was a gift of a question.. momentum was crucial and is in my opinion the best was to explain it.
change of mom = 2mv
change of mom = ft
so there is a force exerted on the wall by the particle,
pressure = force per unit area,
The gas exerts therefore has pressure,
i made some other random points i've seen on previous mark schemes too just for good measure but standard question i thought. As you say its all opinion, you may have found other questions better than i did due to teaching focus etc

(Original post by S.Patchett)
For 4marks though, i thought that was a gift of a question.. momentum was crucial and is in my opinion the best was to explain it.
change of mom = 2mv
change of mom = ft
so there is a force exerted on the wall by the particle,
pressure = force per unit area,
The gas exerts therefore has pressure,
i made some other random points i've seen on previous mark schemes too just for good measure but standard question i thought. As you say its all opinion, you may have found other questions better than i did due to teaching focus etc

still dont think what you wrote there is full marks though which is the stupid thing 1 bullet point was the many molecule(s) so didnt get that, and another was saying "the force exerted by the molecule(s) on wall is equal to force exerted by the wall on the molecule(s) (by newtons 3rd law)". Which is completely irrelevant to the question... I just think it penalises people who understand what they are talking about, and gives marks to those who have no idea but just wrote down a load of **** vaguely related to what it wanted, which isnt right imo..

Your right though that is the best way to explain it, perhaps im just a bit bitter, i lost 2 marks because i just waffled and didnt talk specifically about momentum

yeah i put newtons 3rd law in i think, got an A* anyway and i can think of other places i lost marks... i will have mentioned many molecules contributing to the pressure as well as that was always a mark, i was just going off memory there

(Original post by just george)
My friends dad actually wrote to the exam board to ask why the grade boundaries were so high and so compressed. They basically said that the paper turned out to be much more straight forward than they expected (possibly due to the extra 15 minutes we got), and at the standardisation meeting (or something like that) they found everyone had done much better than the other exam boards.. They decided they couldnt make the mark scheme harsher so had to up the grade boundaries significantly.
They also said that it was nothing to do with government pressure to make exams harder to pass, and that they dont want to have the grade boundaries anywhere near as high again..

and having seen the markscheme.. i think its ridiculous very specific and picky, and penalising people who understand what they are talking about but havent included odd key words :L

oh yeah don't get me started on that I lost several marks because I didn't specify the word explode when talking about the baloon and the fact that the gas would take up a greater volume as the temperature decreased as the balloon went up- hence they had to release some else there would be too much. MY answer was along those lines- the physics was correct according to my teacher etc yet no mark because I didn't say the balloon would explode lol- I thought it would be obvious when I said "there would be too great a volume of gas within the balloon" - so from now on I'm going to try and ensure I answer the papers like the person marking it is completely thick but yeah retaking this it is then :/